A Black Man Hangs a White Supremacist: Tyler Shields’s Charged Photography

There he hangs, just feet above the water.

The white, hooded figure whose body is limp and lifeless resembles a uniformed member of the Klu Klux Klan. As he hangs, a black man securely holds the opposite end of the rope. Is he the culprit or the savior? We do not know.

It’s an image shocking even by today’s standards: after all, the despicably archaic act of lynching still permeates today’s society. Just this week a black man in Georgia was found hanging behind a house that wasn’t his.